They Hit With No Warning
by CBK1000
Summary: The match has been struck, the fuse lit. The revolution is here. Sequel to 'And So We Lie Down To Sleep'. Part of an ongoing AU Originals series.


**A/N: I didn't expect to have this up so quickly after my last upload, but while writing the first one-shot in this series most of the ideas for this one were already circling my brain; it was only a matter of actually writing them down. I make no promises as to my update speed, as I have said before that I have other writing I'm working on that gets most of my attention. **

**A couple of notes on this. In my last one-shot, I said I intended for this to be a trilogy. That's not happening; I have too many ideas. So we'll just call it a series; it will be a sequence of one-shots, the number of which I couldn't tell you right now, and though AU, I will probably incorporate some of the television series into this, unless I just absolutely despise every little part of it. (Except for Joseph Morgan's dimples, of course- those will always remain close to my heart.) If you have not yet read 'And So We Lie Down To Sleep', please do; this will make much more sense. This fic picks right up within hours of 'And So We'. **

**Also, a warning. I love Klaus' vulnerability. I love the other side of him that comes out when he is with Caroline, the way he smiles, his charm, the at time almost bashfulness he exudes- but what I love, love, _love_ to writeis naughty manipulative murderous bastard Klaus. Which probably says a lot about me. **

**So if you want moments of humanity, if you want to see the soft side of Klaus, if you want to see him open up and let in a certain blonde little distraction, you will find that here. But Klaus is not a nice man, and I will not gloss over that. He is a thousand years old; the road to redemption is going to be a very long one, and he will never be a hero. So be warned, because within you will find the squishy Klaus, who draws ponies and is willing to wait a hundred years for one woman, but you will also find the Klaus who murdered Carol Lockwood, who struck down his hybrids and prefers Stefan in all his Rippah glory. (I do too, I confess. He's much more fun.)**

**If I didn't make it clear in the notes for 'And So We', these fics incorporate only everything up to and including 4x19; I wrote 'And So We' shortly before 4x21 aired and just decided to take a complete nosedive into the AU realm after 4x20. (Though I did actually predict Bonnie's death, somehow.)**

**One more thing, and then I promise to shut up. This fic is for clangwee, for her amazing fanart (thank you so much for giving me my first two covers here on this site), and to lenina20, for her unabashed tumblr enthusiasm. Read 'Mardis Gras' by her if you want a well thought-out alternative to mutant Twilight babies.**

* * *

The warmth.

This is what you always notice first.

Past your teeth, over your tongue it rolls, down your throat, into the belly. Choke a little if it flows too quickly; take a breath, pause for a beat, listen to each pulse of the heart.

Roll back your head with its blue calligraphy veins and its empty demon eyes.

Revel.

Feel the flesh stiffen and the throat shudder.

The bowels empty, the bladder drains.

In this way man turns himself to meat, but it's too late, get it, you've already _taken _everything you needed- what is left behind is only a thing to be put away in the ground, sorry, sorry sorry sorry _sorry _but that's _not enough _is it it will _never _be enough _God_-

You or them.

Kill or be killed.

And if you enjoy it just a little- if you savor the blood on your tongue and the heat in your throat, if there is a little tug somewhere down deep, a tingling, a _yes yes yes more more more_, isn't it ok, for just a moment, to indulge this savoring and this heat and this little tugging somewhere down deep- shouldn't you _embrace _what you have become-

But what would Mommy say, little girl?

She loves her daughter the monster, who was once a girl with tiaras and tutus and heels too large. She has accepted the unnatural lust, the perverted thirst.

She pushed herself beyond this, because somewhere underneath the blue calligraphy veins and the empty demon eyes is her precious pigtailed Caroline, eternally five and innocent and wearing her mother's lipstick in messy clown layers around her mouth.

No children ever grow up, in the eyes of those who made them.

But this one did.

She grew up, and on an in-between year she died floundering in her hospital bed, pillow over her face.

But she cheated the odds, thumbed her nose at the process.

She came back.

She came back and she killed a man and six months ago a dozen more fell to her hand, but three hours ago- three hours ago was when she gave up on her count at last, when she lost touch with its tally.

Still feel the way they broke apart beneath your fingertips, don't you, little girl? And the hearts- the hearts with their warm leaking syrup and those strawberry stains licked trembling from your fingers -the _smells_- the itching of your fangs and the quivering of your dead heart -feel it all, don't you- want it _back_, don't you, _don't you_-

Mommy, she didn't mean to.

Mommy, they were going to hurt her, _please_, understand.

But how do you understand your little girl, your little pigtailed girl with the chocolate smears across her lips and the crayon squiggles in her hair reaching into a man and pulling her hand away black, how do you _understand _the way this little pigtailed girl lifted this hand to her nose and stood for so long drinking in the scent of death-

You didn't want to like it.

But they rose up around you and you plowed your way through them, you left them behind in smears, in daubs, in chunks, and you breathed deep of their warm urine deaths and their moist red screams, and you wanted more.

Think mommy can look past this, little girl?

* * *

She surfaces from her dreams with a gasp.

She has been swallowed by his couch, pulled down deep into its plush leather folds, and for a moment she can only lie here, staring at his ceiling.

She hears him arrive, one soft whoosh of motion that barely stirs the jacket she has left draped over the back of this plush leather couch.

He stands behind this couch saying nothing, but his eyes- those she can see in the window to her left, and they are soft, and they understand, how freaking _wonderful _is that-

Of course he understands.

Of course he _gets it_, mom, he is what _she _is now.

Still love her with her bajillion victims in piles in the street- still want to _make it work _somehow-

"I'm taking a shower," she says tonelessly.

It is her second in three hours.

* * *

In his bathroom with its hotel opulence she scrubs herself pink and curls away into a ball beneath the stream cranked hot enough to scald, and cries until she cannot see.

All those _people_.

* * *

He holds his brush but he does not paint.

In the downstairs bathroom she huddles where she thinks he cannot hear, faucet running, shower thundering, and she sobs.

He has killed a thousand men, more, and she sobs over her paltry handful.

She sobs, and it mangles him.

A thousand years, and still he is folded up so small inside, listening to this girl.

* * *

For minutes, hours, _days_, she huddles in his shower trying to catch her breath.

Stupid, right, she doesn't need to breathe- that's not what sustains her now, it's the moist red screams and the warm urine deaths, remember, the rag dolling of a body in her arms, the way you feel it go, that transition from man to thing: there is the one last little sigh and the final feeble kick and then the emptying, the draining out, and it slumps, it hangs, lays its head down on your shoulder and its hands along your sides-

She is buried.

This is what grief is, a stopping up of all your airholes, a layering over, a covering-up.

Suffocation.

Maybe a creature like her is not supposed to need air; maybe she doesn't require it, maybe she has evolved beyond it, but grief comes, and it pounds you in the chest, it folds you over at the waist, and freaking forget about your _evolution_, your higher functioning.

What she needs is some room to expand, but the water is so heavy and her skin is so tight, and inside of her is something that wants to come out, that crawls up from her chest and hangs up in her throat, and, God, she wants her _mom_, she wants _Bonnie_, Elena, sleepovers in pink Gap boxers and afternoon get-togethers at the Grill-

She just wants to _go back_.

But you can't rewind.

You can't pick up the pieces you have broken and you cannot put back together the families you have destroyed.

You can smile through these moments, you can grit your teeth, brace your shoulders, give the whole world the freaking finger, but you can never undo.

You lift cars with your perfectly-manicured pinkie and you toss about football players with doll ease, and look at that, didn't even mess up your hair or smudge your makeup, and the days- they creep and skitter and fly by and nothing about your complexion changes, and each morning, you get to wake up, and you get to remember that nothing about it _will _ever change, that forever you will look and you will see only bright eyes, unlined forehead, smooth cream cheeks.

You can do all of that, but you can't bring back your friend in her long wooden box; you can't dig down to reach her, rip her free, pump her chest, inflate her dusty earthworm lungs.

You can't take the boy with his smooth baby cheeks and his bumpy hormonal chin and tip his heart carefully back into his chest, God, sorry about that, her mistake, here you go, won't happen again-

And your childhood friend who found you crying on the playground, who took you away to play house- she doesn't love you anymore.

She left you behind.

You can outrun a car, a train, perhaps a plane, and you cannot catch up to her.

You can never pull her back.

And so you huddle, and you pray.

God, let me wake up.

God, let this be a joke.

The parties and the tests and the petty high school dramas smoothed over in a day- give them _back_, _please_.

* * *

A heart is a thing of softness, of pliability.

To break it is merely an expression.

Tear it, rip it, puncture it- in all of these way you may injure it, but a break is something which wounds only that which can bend, and though a heart may squeeze, twist, knot itself tight, to bend is an acrobatic it cannot achieve.

But a tear, a rip, a puncture-

These are not what he hears in her cries.

None of them do they create such jagged edges; they do not thrust so deeply.

He looks at the canvas which stands before him but he does not see; he hears the tiny raindrop heartbeats of the humans who gather below for their nighttime carousing, but he does not listen.

He stands.

He stands and he tightens his hand upon this brush which does not move and he stares at this canvas which does not brighten and this tiny burning star in his throat, this throttling of his chest, this slow stone plummeting of the stomach-

If he has obsessed before, if he has allowed infatuation to slip its blade with barely a warning into his heart, this has been only an irritation.

An itch.

Something new feels its way inside him now with careful fingers, prying here, lifting up there.

He is exposed.

The blade in his heart turns and the throttling of his chest spreads up into his throat, and each little cry she gives, every tiny sniffle she makes- these all open him up, unearth things which for so long he has kept buried.

In each man there is a place which is kept securely locked, and so too is there such a place in one like him, and when the bolt is thrown and the door flung wide, a little cringing back is to be expected, a flinging up of the arm, a squinting of the eyes.

In this way he stands blankly blinking before his unfinished painting, and he understands.

Certainly he is just a terrible person.

Certainly he has for so long lost touch with his humanity that he understands only how to exist, and not to live.

But perceptive she is, his little infant vampire.

Love-

It only shut itself away.

It withered, dried up, scattered itself in cinders specks throughout this place he for so long kept securely locked.

But among the cinders, there is always an ember, burning on.

He shuts his eyes.

Stop crying, sweetheart.

Undo these knots from his heart.

Put out this burning in his throat.

If you have wanted to touch him, to reach something he has tried to forget, you have done your duty. You have closed your hand round this thing he has tried to forget and you have reeled it squirming up into the light, and now stop making him _feel_- show him how to shut it off once more, let go of his bloody _chest_-

Shut it off, or step into his arms.

What does he know of comfort, of doling it out or accepting its offer, but to hold her- to fold her away in his arms-

Here is safety, sweetheart.

Here is someone who for a thousand years has learned a thing or two about loyalty, about leaving behind.

Here is someone who wants to touch, but does not understand how to reach.

Here is someone who will not let go.

* * *

She finds him in his studio, paint on his hands and in stripes on his nose.

He's heard her come up the steps, of course, but he waits before turning around, like he's giving her time to compose herself or something, and seriously, how weird is it- _consideration_, from a guy like this, who with Tyler's long-nailed fingers threatened to rip out his heart, who held Carol Lockwood's head beneath a fountain until she stopped struggling, who looks at her with none of these things in his eyes.

Why does he have to just be Klaus when he looks at her? He is not the Original Hybrid (capitalization required), Mr. Smarter-stronger-one-step-ahead, the one, the only, simpering peasants, now have a seat and wait for him to get around to killing you.

He is just a man.

He is just a man with his hands of oil and graphite, with his acrylic hair and his black-powdered beard.

He carries his art in fumes in his clothes, in stains on his fingers.

What she sees is just this guy with a smile, a little shy, a lot infatuated, streaked with his hobby, waiting for her to go first, to speak or turn away.

If she needs to talk, she sees in his face.

He is here.

She clears her throat and tucks her wet hair carefully behind her ears. "So…I guess I'm stuck here for a while."

"Marcel knows you are potential leverage against me, should he feel the need to put me in my place. If you try to leave, he'll have you followed, and brought back. He'll keep you here, Caroline. I expect you'd rather live out your little…temporary confinement in my mansion and not Marcel's dungeons."

"Well, there goes my grade for the semester. But I guess it doesn't matter- I've got time, right?"

"You can have a thousand degrees."

"One for each birthday," she says, and for freaking _real _does he have to flash his dimples every time he smiles?

She steps closer to his canvas, stands staring up at its tightly-stretched frame. "So how many do you have? A masters, a doctorate…cosmetology license?"

"A little of each," he tells her with another smile, dipping his brush into a pot.

She watches him for a moment, admires the flexing of his forearm, all the careful little maneuvering of bones beneath skin as he works the bristles gingerly onto this blank white backdrop.

He smells of paint, of fresh soap and lemongrass shampoo and for just a moment she wants to take this in, to roll it around, to just…_savor _it, him, the way he didn't point out her red eyes or her still running nose, how she stood before him with her clean scrubbed face and her lank uncoiled hair and all she saw in his eyes was, God this woman is beautiful.

You spend all this time, building walls.

You paint over your real skin, brick away your actual personality, stack and stack and stack.

Go higher.

Hide better, layer deeper.

Don't _look _at me, you say with your pink-gloss lips and your heavy raccoon eyes and your fake little I'm-ok laugh.

And then for so long, you go looking for someone to knock down these walls and strip off this paint and chip away at these bricks. You want someone who will say, but I _want _to look, it's ok for me to see, go on, take your hands from your face and the layers from your heart.

Do not be afraid.

Break down the wall and kick away its fragments and forget why you ever wanted it in the first place.

And this guy -the way he _looks _at her- he wants in and he is not afraid and how freaking _terrifying _is that.

She crosses her arms over her chest, sinks down into herself, darts one hand up to carefully tuck away another strand of hair. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything you like, Caroline."

"When you had Tyler bite me, and you came to save me- you made this whole big speech about everything that's out there, you know, how much I haven't seen, all these things the world has to offer. But you said that you could let me die, if I wanted to, if I thought my existence was meaningless. And then you said that you'd thought about it yourself, once or twice."

* * *

He stiffens.

He sets down his brush.

Why did you feel like that, she wants to know.

When.

How.

Show me a sign, her eyes beg him.

Give me another little piece.

She wants to see.

To comprehend, to dig up, to reassure herself that underneath the monster is a man who struggles still to breach the waves, to hold his head above the foam.

And so he takes a breath.

He takes a breath, and he reminds her of the horse who was taken away by his father's sword.

He tells her of this creature, this friend, who saw him through the English lines, who swept him nimbly past the liquid mud of Ohain and the men and horses in their wrestler's knots, breaking apart, boiling over, crashing together.

She did not judge.

She loved without limits.

In her stall he knew no isolation and on her back he felt no hate, and when he had no one else she did not desert, she bumped her head against his side and thrust her nose inside his pockets and rested her soft velvet chin against his head.

Man shied away and she stepped in close.

She never balked.

And to lose this- to be given this love so freely, to look forward to it in the morning and remember it in the evenings, to hold tight this secret within your heart as man looks upon you with his wide eyes and his warning cries- to _know_ that while man may loathe, be repulsed, there is one who looks upon you with soft eyes and nonjudgmental heart-

To _lose this_, Caroline-

* * *

She slips her hand into his.

And it's like- it's like no one's ever held his hand before.

He isn't sure what to do.

He flexes his fingers carefully, stares down at this little union of flesh in a tangle between them, turns their hands palm-up and then rotates them back down, and through all of this, she holds on.

She squeezes him tight.

She looks at him with no makeup on her face or curls in her hair and he stares back with his broken, broken eyes, and neither of them turn away.

* * *

In the tenth century he held little Rebekah's hand as she crossed the stream, feeling her way with her tiny slippered feet.

She grabbed for him so easily and she held him so tightly, and on the far bank stood Elijah, beckoning reassuringly, one step at a time, they coaxed her across, and where did this _go_.

The little hand in his-

She did not think twice, you know.

She _trusted _him.

She wound her fingers through his own and she knew he would see her across, she knew this stream which wet her ankles and splashed up over her calves would not claim her for its depths with little chivalrous Nik beside her; she was _so sure_, little sunshine Rebekah with her gap-toothed smile and her sprigs of lavender tucked away in the folds of her skirt.

A thousand years, he has lived without this simple touch, this reaching out.

And how easily she slips her fingers into his.

How simple a motion this is for her, how confidently her fingers touch and bind and pull in close.

They stand together.

How _long _has it been- for how many centuries has he slipped from year to year with no hand to touch his own, with no one to stand beside him- together, what a word, what a _notion_-

The unguarded moments of life- these are precisely what he has armored himself against, these little genuine connections of the hands, the eyes, the hearts.

To bare your chest, lay open your heart- here I am, you say, I have given you the tools, now chisel me away, break me apart, strike me down.

A story offered, a wound revealed, a weakness exposed.

What will she _do_, with this new weapon he has given her, he wonders, and yet she offers not a sound.

There is only a smile and a soft pressure against his fingers and something inside of him, crawling away to hide, hesitating as it goes, peeking tentatively back out from behind the dark.

He wants…

He wants another thousand years of a hand to hold his own, to not let him go on alone. How does he _keep _her, this -he cannot bend such a moment to his will- he cannot force its fidelity or draw out its duration, but what else does he _know_-

But she looks, and she must see, with those perceptive little eyes of hers, and still she does not turn away, no hand comes up to shield her face.

So he waits.

And for what he does not know, and for how long he does not know either, but he has heard that this thing called love which has somehow pried something aside and tiptoed its way inside-

He has heard it's worth waiting for.

* * *

"I want to go outside!" she says so plaintively, and he looks up from his sketchpad to find her standing at the window, nose pressed to the glass, the street in a multicolored frothing below her.

"You were just out," he replies, returning to his sketch, frowning just a little as he smudges a corner here, dabs an angle there.

"You took me shopping." She flips a curl over her shoulder and draws back from the window, turning those eyes on him, and how can the batting of those lashes send his heart to rattling in his chest- how has he anything new to feel, to be surprised by, after a thousand _years_-

"One of your favorite pastimes, if I recall."

"You recall right. But there's a parade, and there's _dancing_, and everyone is down there having fun except us. You said you and Marcel are in a sort of stalemate right now, right? So you can indulge me just this one, teeny, tiny little time-"

"It's safer in here. Marcel and I are circling, sweetheart. If he sees an opportunity, he'll take it."

"Well, it's not like we're exactly hiding away in here. He knows where you live."

"Marcel has the good sense to not strike at me in my own home, on my own territory."

She takes a step toward him, hands behind her back, those bloody eyelashes still going, and with a sigh he sets aside his charcoal, pad still open across his knees, and folds both hands over it.

"I happen to know somebody really old, and strong, and powerful who could keep me safe."

He looks down with a smile, flicks his eyes back up to hers with head still bowed, eyebrow cocked, and she gives him the lashes, and the smile, truly a knockout blow, sweetheart, and he edges one finger out with another sigh to flip the cover of his sketchbook shut.

"Please?"

"All right," he concedes, and the way her face lights up, how bright her eyes can go- will he ever be used to this; will he ever not stand blinded before her, helplessly blinking-

"Thank you!" she says with a little enthusiastic hop and a clap, and for a moment her arms loop themselves around his neck as he stands, and it is meant to only be a moment, an instant, he understands this, but for so long has he gone without this casual handling, this unthinking affection, and so when she would step back out of his reach to fluff her curls and straighten her jacket, he flattens his hands across her back and holds her where she is.

He breathes her in.

Into the curve of her neck he tucks his face, against the slope of her shoulder he shuts his eyes, and he does not understand what it is about the softness, the warmth, the proximity that holds him locked within this moment, that tightens his throat and squeezes his chest, but he would _like _to, sweetheart, to be shown another way, to grasp a hand with certainty, to know precisely where his fingers must go.

To embrace without thought, to simply reach out and know that waiting for him is someone who will reach back-

She pulls away, but she smiles as she does so, she touches his cheek and she whispers away with her supernatural speed to reach the front door, and with a smile of his own he just stands for a moment, staring after her.

* * *

New Orleans oozes.

The brows drip, the sidewalks steam, the sky leaves its moisture in mollusk trails along the buildings.

God, if there exists such a creature, has pressed his hand down upon this city and squeezed until there is no more dew to be bled, until it lies in little half moons across collars, beneath arms, over hearts.

The sun has set, the moon peeks, and still the city sweats.

He smells them all, these close-packed creatures with their sticky ice cream fingers and their nicotine sighs. There is a ripeness to them, a hot sweet wetness, an animal stink, and his fangs prickle and his eyes darken, but for a thousand years he has controlled, reined in, and these clammy peasants with their bellowing little brats will hardly undo him.

He scans.

The drumming of the hearts, the whispering of the children's soft candy breaths- he filters these all through his eyes, his ears, his nose, sifts them aside, roots down to the underlayer.

They stroll among the humans with their strangely beating hearts and their irregular breaths, and beside him she watches the streets like a child, pointing and smiling and laughing.

He cocks his head, listening.

Three to the right, two blocks down.

Four behind him, in a far-away alley.

And the main spectacle, of course, the float with its dark rosewood throne and its red marble veins which has just begun to nose beyond the Macy's two blocks down, holding aloft its king and his faithful minions.

The streamers whip.

The children roar.

The cars creep.

A whirling of juggler's torches.

A tinkling of dancer's cymbals.

And the applause: like a wave, it courses through them, from one end of this street to the other.

The streetlamps with their electric pops light one by one, always just a step ahead, turning this great wet city to liquid butter.

Everything gold- the flames and the brows and the curve of her cheek, the hand with its polished nails tugging enthusiastically at his sleeve.

Three to the right, one block down.

Four behind him, among the spectators.

And the main spectacle with its throne of dark rosewood and red marble, half a block away, crawling, crawling.

A woman in her gymnast's leotard flips, is caught and stands balancing on her partner's outstretched arm.

She tucks and sideflips to the float beside them, flicks one hand up to grasp the ladder above her, hops with lean panther agility from step to step, to alight with arms outstretched on the platform above.

She steps out onto the tightrope.

Her partner sets his palms upon the oily street and up his body goes, like an arrow it points toward the sky, and in this way he keeps pace with the procession, tap tap tapping his hands forward, forward.

Caroline laughs.

She curls her fingers into his sleeve.

He slips his hand around her forearm, tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, and the smile she offers him- he sees it even with head cocked, eyes elsewhere, but in his throat his heart beats so quickly and his palms with their layer of humidity twitch, and all throughout him there is a tensing, a coiling up, but with his thousand years he smoothes this down, loosens his hand upon her arm and his shoulders beneath their cotton.

Marcel need catch no scent of the prey; to take her away now is an admission, a confirmation.

Yes, he cannot lose her.

Yes, strike here, wound him greatly, hit him where it hurts.

Leave him bleeding, to be picked away at when he is down.

He has already revealed her for what she is, not some mere trifle, a dalliance, but an Achilles' heel, a chink, a thread to be taken hold of and unraveled, but to flee now is a tucking of the tail, an offering of the belly, and he does not bow, he will not touch down upon bended knee with eyes cast down before his master.

_He _is the master, mate, alpha male, forever and always, and he will take this city within his grip and squeeze, and squeeze, until there is nothing left to seep out.

To dust, he will raze this city if he must. He has a thousand more years, a million other cities, and of what value is this one teeming metropolis with its Spanish houses and its French cuisine without her; for whom does he care other than this one small-town girl with her soft smile and her long lashes and her hands which do not turn him away?

"Klaus?"

He listens.

Three to his right, thirty feet away.

Four behind him, jostling their way to the front.

"Klaus!"

"It's all right," he tells her, and he curls his hand over hers where it lies within the crook of his elbow.

She has heard them as well, felt them circling round, and though she keeps her eyes forward and her smile pasted on she presses herself more tightly against him; she has lost her childlike wonder for this display before them.

"Caroline," he says softly.

She looks up at him.

He smiles.

She will be safe.

Perhaps he has not promised with his words, but he has told her with his eyes and his rough monster's hands which handle her so gently.

Lean, Caroline.

Let him do for her what he for a thousand years has done for none but himself.

Trust, depend upon, _believe_.

He spins.

There is no sneaking up on an Original, mate.

Through the crowd he reaches with the hand he slips reluctantly from her own, and a darting out, a flaring of the fingers, and the man's neck sounds its kindling crack, the crowd around him none the wiser, he is that quick, and with a smile he steps forward as the man sags backward, Caroline still on his arm.

"Looks as though your friend's had a little too much to drink, mate," he says to the dark-haired boy who flashes forward to cradle his friend, eyes wide.

Marcel upon his throne of rosewood and marble lurches, inches, rolls on.

"What's your name, mate?"

"Jack," the boy tells him with his automaton's voice.

"Jack." He smiles. "Any friends? A family, perhaps?"

"My mom and my sister. Two little brothers."

"Human?"

"Yes."

"Fantastic." He smiles wider. "I want your mother and your dear sister and little brothers to live long, beautiful lives, Jack. Now, can they do that, with their livers torn out? With their throats ripped open?"

"No."

"No. Of course not. So here is my proposal, Jack. The next time Marcel orders you to follow me, if he so much as hints that you are to harm Caroline, I want you to instead go to your mother's pretty little home, and I want you to eat her first. Then your sister. And so on, mate, you get the picture."

"I can't disobey Marcel."

"Well, that presents a problem then, doesn't it? Perhaps you might seek employment elsewhere then, mate. For the sake of your family."

He steps back.

He lets the boy go.

The four melt away into the crowd, carrying their friend.

The crowd shifts.

Caroline blinks up at him.

Behind him are half a dozen of them, separate, distinct, standing out from this crowd with its animal stink and its nicotine sighs, and now among the sweating children and the parents steeped in their fast food grease creeps the scent of varnish, the cloying reek of Marcel's cologne.

Just horrible, mate, really, just a spritz will do.

"I need a few volunteers!" he calls out like a god, voice echoing.

The cars coast to a stop.

The jugglers snatch their torches with nimble fingers from the sky.

The dancers freeze; the cymbals still their incessant bell clanging.

The acrobats with their pointed toes and lithe cat muscles halt where they stand, teetering, swaying, hanging above.

* * *

Ok, he is looking right at her.

He is looking _right _freaking _at _her, and maybe she was tired of being shut away inside when beyond the glass there was a whole city waiting for her, this entire boiling metropolis with its food and music and gajillion French-import shoes, but the way his eyes cut and his lackeys gather-

Ok, breathe.

Billion-year-old Original Hybrid half an inch away, remember, and if there's one thing he never refuses, it's pulling it right out for the pissing contest, and his is always bigger-

Oh-kay, no, not going there, just _breathe_, breathe and get through, it's going to be fine, so many _people _all around- what is he going to do in front of everyone-

* * *

"Some volunteers?" Marcel calls, and several humans break away from the pack to stride with their excited lemming chatter out into the street.

They lock eyes.

Marcel smiles.

Klaus Mikaelson, old buddy, old pal, he says with his eyes but not his lips.

This one's for you.

* * *

The humans mount the float.

She hangs onto him with both hands now, heart hammering, why is her _heart _hammering, stupid crappy _dead _thing, and he shifts himself subtly over to eclipse her, not quite covering her, exactly, but putting himself first in the line of fire, his shoulders tense and his back knotted, and why why why the _hell _did she want to see this stupid parade anyway-

* * *

"I'd like to dedicate the festivities tonight," Marcel calls out, rising with both hands in the air.

"To Miss Caroline Forbes, daughter of Liz and William, RIP to the latter. Terrible accident, I'm told. Had a run-in with a particularly nasty kind of monster- the crime rates in this country, just terrible." He winks.

His minions scatter, spread out, take a human each for themselves.

"But I digress. To Miss Caroline Forbes, for bringing the mighty Klaus Mikaelson to his knees. But who can resist a blonde, guys, am I right?" He bows theatrically, straightens with a smile, clicks his eyes over to Caroline's, holds them for an unacceptably long moment.

He has decided.

Death may be too merciful for Marcel but when this is all through, he will pluck his heart from his chest and eat it still pumping, and he will lick its blood from his fingers before this city which for too long has bent its neck to the guillotine of this insufferable man.

* * *

"Liz says hello, Caroline. She misses you."

Her _mother_-

She lunges forward.

Klaus catches her easily, hauls her back onto the sidewalk, stands with his hands tightly pinning her arms to her sides, lips at her ear.

"He is baiting you. Let him have his moment. It will soon be over."

"He knows _everything _-how does he know- oh my God, what if he-"

"Shh," he says, and his hands soften and his nose burrows into her hair, but she will not be freaking _placated _by this, he can't _know _that her mother is all right, he cannot stand here and stroke her hair and encircle her waist and expect her to just melt away, to relax back into him- she _has no one else_-

The humans with their vampire companions stand so still and around them the crowd shifts, sews itself together, sways back apart.

The streetlights pop on, one by one by one, on down the line, little bug zapper _snaps _that twitch her in his arms, and now around them there is only the soft breathing of the humans, the restless shifting of their children, the stench of their sweat, the sweet meat of their throats-

Onto the float steps a woman in police blues, hair clipped short, and it is the same color as hers and her dead heart turns over in her chest and she lunges forward again, is again hauled back, and now he lifts her off her feet to hold her squirming against his chest and he will let her _go _that's her _mom that's her mom_ _please _put her _down_ she can't just _stand here _please God _please_-

"Caroline! Caroline, _look_!" he hisses into her ear, holding her as she thrashes, his cheek pressed to hers, his breath warm, his arms warmer, and for just a moment this hot blind veil peels itself away from her eyes and she blinks, blinks again, sags back against his chest and presses her lips together to keep her sobs silent, because this woman with her clipped-short hair and her police blues is not Elizabeth Forbes after all, is only another woman with another daughter who will come home to an empty house and a full fridge.

How many sympathy casseroles will this woman garner, she wants to know; how many tears will her daughter shed- how many times will she hear sorry, it's going to be all right, if you do not forget they are not truly gone-

"My mistake," Marcel says, spreading his hands.

He reaches for the wine glass glinting on the arm of his throne, lifts it into the sky. "To the happy couple."

He tips it back down his throat and snaps the fingers of his free hand and the humans with their vampire companions are set upon, just like freaking that, before she can even blink.

* * *

A slaughter.

No neat puncturing of the throat, no tidy draining of the blood.

A frenzy.

A rabid snarling of the dogs.

They pull and tear and rip to pieces, fling these pieces out among the acrobats and the streamers and the children, and how quiet is the crowd, how eerie is their mannequin stillness-

There is only the snapping of the streetlights, the sizzling of the bugs which find their way to these bright white enticements.

The slurping tongues, the rooting fangs.

Caroline, shivering in his arms, her thumping rabbit heart, the soft powder pressure of her cheek against his own.

Marcel smiles.

A head arcs out into the crowd and lands gushing at his feet, and with a little cry Caroline stretches down her boot to kick it away.

He sets her back on her feet.

Marcel lifts his arms.

The eerie mannequin crowd erupts.

* * *

"Oh my God," she whispers, staring into their blank cheering faces.

Their mouths stretch, their hands wave, but behind their eyes is nothing, an entire sea of doll glass, on and on and on.

"He _compelled _them."

Ok, through the nose, Forbes, one, two, you can _do _this-

Klaus steps out into the street, hands behind his back, shoulders squared, and she just knows he has that creepy little I'm-gonna-get-you smirk on his face because there is some kind of stare-down going on between the two now, here it is, didn't she _say_ it was all going to boil down to this-

Marcel lifts himself slowly out of his tacky overblown chair and the crowd goes on cheering and the vampires go on killing and in Klaus' back not so much as a stray little tendon twitches-

* * *

He moves.

He flies.

His feet hardly touch the ground and his eyes give no warning and his body betrays no hint, and he will always be faster.

Better, stronger, more _evolved_.

Try with your paltry 113 years to stop his flight, to arrest his motion.

Reach out with your feeble centenarian hands, go on, mate, he _dares you_.

Stand before him.

Stretch out your arms, block his path, preserve your forces.

Call out the troops.

In war one wave is withdrawn and another takes its place and forward this second waves surges, up and over it crashes, but the shore upon which this wave breaks consists only of men who scramble and bleed and die.

Sabers in hand, muskets to the shoulder they build their writhing ant wall, but always there is a flaw, one who will break, peel away, stumble back.

An opening is exposed.

A weakness is found.

Through this gap the invaders pour with their demon cries to take the lives of men more courageous, less intelligent.

But send as many as you want.

He is no man with frail valor and brittle skin; go on and break his bones, thrust your blades into his heart, your bullets into his skull.

Go on, mates.

_Go on_.

From the first of Marcel's minions he takes the heart; the second the head, the third the spleen.

And so on and so forth.

With his red hands and redder lips he walks among them, and never does he lose his smile, never do these red hands stop moving or these redder lips stop latching on.

Behind him, there is a sudden break in this eerie mannequin crowd.

A resurrection.

The first cries are quiet: the startled whimpers of children, expecting any moment a kind adult hand reaching down to staunch their fears, to hold back the darkness. There are no monsters, they wait to hear any moment; it is only a dream.

As Marcel's men fall this crowd with its marble eyes and its stiff dummy smiles begins to move, to shake off, to awaken.

Bad form, that. A man has to get his hands dirty sometimes, Marcel. See what happens when you let the help take care of everything?

He crushes the last of them to pieces between his fingers, lets all the wet little raindrops of him collect in a puddle at Marcel's polished boots.

The street boils.

The children scream, the parents scoop them up with panicked arms; the gymnast on her rope sways and stumbles and plummets with a scream to crack her skull with a melon _thock _against the base of the platform.

He smells their panic, tips his head back to drink it in, to feel the blood drain from lips to tongue to throat, not quite so sweet as that which these blind rampaging beasts carry within them, no, but he is not so highbrow in matters such as this.

No one likes a picky eater after all, mate.

* * *

She steps up onto the float, hands in fists at her sides.

She steps over the heads, toes aside the hearts.

Maybe he is just consumed by Klaus, by all the little confetti pieces of his men spread out around him.

Maybe she is just so _angry _that something rises up inside her and moves her arms, her legs of its own free will, manipulates them with this separate entity that is faster, stronger, more advanced than newborn Caroline Forbes with her two pitiful vampire years.

She slams into him with a snarl, forearm to his throat, and he sits down hard in his throne, and she slams him again, _again_, sit the _hell _down and _listen _to her, _asshole_, because she is not going to freaking _say this again_, do you _understand_?

Her mother is all she has left.

Her mother, her beautiful, beautiful mother is going to meet a nice man, and she is going to have children who can give her grandchildren, and they are going to be there for her, they will understand the crinkling skin, the softening bones, all the little transformations off time that she will never comprehend.

She will not be alone.

She is going to be loved by so many, many people.

She will not be brought down by one stupid pitiful man who needs to prove a point, who needs so badly to be lord of the manor because mommy didn't hug him enough or daddy shortchanged him in the pants department or, God, _whatever_.

"If you touch my mother, I will rip out your throat," she promises.

* * *

The screams crescendo.

He likes to think of it as an encore.

He holds out his arm and she releases Marcel to take it with a huff, and together they step arm in arm off the float to be swallowed up in the crowd.

* * *

She calls her mother the moment they step inside.

He lounges on his couch before the window, contemplating his reflection in the glass, and behind him she paces, voice bright, smile fake.

"Mom, hi," she says, and how full of longing her voice is.

For how long has he gone without this simple yearning, a boy's uncomplicated maternal need- to reach out to the woman who bore you, who for the first time washed your flimsy limbs and perched upon your head the tiny knitted hat which for hours she labored over with needles and squinted eyes-

He shuts his eyes.

There are the usual salutations, the reassurances, college is fine, her grades are up, she has made new friends.

Do not worry.

"You should take a vacation, mom. You work too hard, you know? Just go somewhere for a while; take a break. Come on, mom, when's the last time you went anywhere, ever?"

And there is the expected denial: she is too needed, she can't just drop everything, she has her _duty_, Caroline.

She hangs up and wipes her eyes. "He's going to hurt her. Oh my God, my _mom_- he can't-"

He takes the phone from her hand, sets it down on the couch.

"Marcel is frightened," he tells her. "He staged that little display today because he needed to prove himself master of the house. If he didn't feel challenged, Caroline, he wouldn't have done it." He smiles and smoothes a curl carefully out of her eyes. "He'll be cleaning up this little mess we made him for some time, trying to settle things down, to show the people that he is still in charge, that this was merely a fluke, that the reins are not slipping right through his fingers. He has his resources, yes, but he'll have them working throughout the city, quieting this."

"But what if you're _wrong _-I can't just- God, I should have _killed _him-"

"Marcel may have his own protégé waiting in the wings. You do not build an empire with no contingency plan, love. He has this whole city beneath his thumb, an entire network of politicians, police officers, an army of supernatural creatures at his beck and call. He must be toppled from the inside. Marcel has roots everywhere; he is a hydra. You cut off the head, you have two more."

She sniffs and brings a hand to her forehead. "And you're going to stop all of this, you're going to take _all _of this from him. You. One person."

He brushes a thumb lightly along her cheekbone, feels the cosmetic powder and the soft white skin underneath it, and does she lean into this touch just slightly- does she strain toward him as he is drawn to her, does she want, long, _feel_-

She shuts her eyes.

She does not lean and she does not lift her arms or slant forward her head to rest it on his chest, but she stays.

She _stays_.

When is the last time he could say this of anyone- when is the last bloody _time _he has not been presented with a back when he has wanted only a hand-

"I am the Original, Caroline," he says softly, feeling from cheekbone to jaw line to lower lip.

* * *

The first thing is to neutralize the threat of Marcel's witch, and through feelers he has put out he learns the name of a man and a bar, and to this bar he takes her the next evening, her soft little hand lingering on his back as he holds the door open for her to precede him.

"Jason Messner?" he inquires of the bartender.

"Yup," the man says, polishing the bar with an old rag the color of soot.

"Allow me to introduce myself. You may have heard of me." He smiles.

Klaus, the man repeats with wide eyes, unhinged jaw, limply unresponsive hand.

_Fantastic_, the look on this man's face, the sour prickling of his sweat within the nostrils.

Do you see this- this is renown, this is respect.

Klaus. Surname unnecessary for this legendary bogeyman of the supernatural, for this celebrated closet monster of the mature.

For only the children do these closet beasts appear with fanged mouth, dead eyes, to slither from beneath the crack, out of the shadows and into the hallowed ground, that stretch of carpet between bed and wardrobe?

No.

So too are the dreams of men stalked by creatures like him, and with only a _name _he brings all these nightmares howling to the surface.

Magnificent.

He leans his elbows down on the bar, tilts himself intimately across its damp surface, voice low, lips quirked.

"I'm looking for some information on an associate of Marcel's. I hear you might be able to help me with that."

"No," the man says, taking a step back.

"A certain little witchy companion of his? You wouldn't know a thing about that, would you?"

"No. I don't know who you're talking about."

His smile spreads. "I hear differently."

You see, Marcel, though it may be a bit messy, a king can't let his minions have all the fun.

He straightens, puts a finger to his lips, takes a step back with a nod.

"Well, that's unfortunate."

He begins to pace, finger still to his lips, tapping, tapping, on down the line of patrons he goes, each engaged in their own little exchanges, with either man or bottle they are engrossed, and here is where this little unawareness is going to cost you, mates.

Turn your back, take a dagger to the spine.

Now, unfortunately for those poor souls who throughout time have tried to maim him in this way, he is immortal, a bit of a god himself, you might say, and so there is no blade strong enough to mar his skin, to sever his spine, but this fragile tissue wrapping which packages man- that's another story all together.

"I _wonder_- you must have a few regulars, hmm, mate? Some of them friends, perhaps?"

The man says nothing.

"This one?" he asks, and as the customer he pauses behind lifts his glass from bar to lips, he whips his hand out, slams it back into the man's mouth, through teeth to tongue, and what a shame- that glass was a bit of an antique if he's not mistaken, and now here it lies in splinters within this pathetic human throat.

He apologizes, mate, go on then and have yourself a good cough- there we are, that wasn't so hard was it; just needed to get that pesky little clot out of the way, didn't we?

The customer spits his blood across the bar, gurgles, slumps forward.

Jason Messner backs away, wheezing, nearly hyperventilating, and he's barely even _started_.

A man flings himself off his stool with a cry and turns to make a break for the door.

He is caught so easily.

"No? This one, then?"

Bit flabby, this one, but, ah, here we are, the spine, what a nice handhold it makes though the fingers slip about within all this red grease-

"Klaus, _stop_!" she screams as he pulls the man's backbone free with one sharp yank, spraying red across the bar, the patrons, the bartender with his silently flapping fish mouth.

There is a riot near the door, women and men climbing over one another, battering friend, neighbor, stranger, punching and kicking and clawing their way free of this knot they have twisted themselves into.

He flashes across the room to block them, turns over the table nearest this struggling writing knot with one neat flip of his boot, catches it one-handed, slams it down to bar the door with its oaken mass.

"I want you to kill anyone who tries to leave, do you understand me?" he instructs a man cowering nearby, and with a nod this man slaps the edge of the beer bottle he still clutches against a nearby table to sheer its base off at the neck.

He sticks it into the neck of a woman who pulls with bleeding nails at this table which bars the door.

"What is her _name_!" he roars. "I want to know everything there is to know about this woman. You will tell me what I want to know, or I will tear this bar down around you. Do you understand me? Do you _understand_?"

"_Stop it_!" she hisses, and behind him now there is a clattering, a crash, and he turns to watch the table wing its way over the heads of the surging crowd to explode in tiny matchstick slivers against the far wall.

She grabs the man with his beer bottle as the door opens and he lunges forward, swinging, and now she slams him face first into the wall hard enough to disable but not kill, and with blazing eyes she turns to him, hands fisted, lips tight.

He twists his fingers into Jason Messner's collar and hauls him forward across the bar, nose to nose, and his mouth twitches and his hot blood surges, and how badly he wants to rip this man apart, to tear and tear, to drink deep, drain him dry, throw him with a wet thud down onto the floor at her feet- how dare she _undermine him_-

"There was a bar fight. My friend and I were never here; you've never seen us before."

"A freaking _bar fight _tore out that guy's _spine_?"

He seizes her by the arm on his way out the door. "What have you _done_?" he snaps, holding her by both shoulders, breathing his harsh asthmatic gasps right into her face, digging in with his fingers, leaning in with his fangs, and if she were anyone else, if she were _anyone else_-

He lets go.

He turns away, fingers to the bridge of his nose.

"You can't _do _that."

"This is _war_, Caroline. They were merely casualties."

"They're _people_!" she screams. "God, you _always _do this -you could have _compelled _him- if he knew anything he would have _told _you, but no, you have to be so frigging…_showy_, you have to make an entrance, you have to always prove that you're the biggest, baddest, meanest kid on the playground-"

"I have shown enough weakness, thanks to you!" he roars, twisting back around to face her, and she stares him right down, she takes her eyes and she thrusts them down inside him where this new thing she has manifested within him feels its way along with careful fingers, and when she turns away, when she lifts her chin and closes off her eyes, when she _shuts down_-

How small she can make him, with her anger.

Winter with her arctic fingers cannot touch him. The sun with its hot yellow rays cannot burn him.

No oven summer drenches him; no stalactite winter frostbites him.

He is deadlocked.

No fever sweats, no midnight chills.

But she looks at him like he is something she has stepped in, something to be scraped off her boot, and winter presses its bitter ache through his heart and summer steams its brand right alongside, and how can one feel _anything _but the jungle humidity of this wet, wet city, Caroline, _explain this_-

Bow, his knees command and his neck reiterates.

Fold.

She has turned her _back_ and now she walks away, and will you just let her _go _then, this woman who after a thousand years has opened so many new doors-

"Caroline," he calls, taking a step forward.

"I don't even want to talk to you right now," she says coldly, striding on.

* * *

He paints.

He leaves little gifts on her bed when she is out of the room, a sketch one day, a necklace the next.

He looks so genuinely hurt, watching her as they pass each other without talking, move from room to room with no words, but she's sorry, she can't just pat him on the head, he's not a puppy to be soothed, _ok_, and God, she knew this was who he was, didn't she, she _knew_, she has _always _known, and yet still somewhere within her there is this…this _wanting_, this straining toward him, and what does that mean, what does it _say _about her-

Mom, tell her it's ok.

She is not a monster, she is just Caroline version 2.0, an upgrade, Windows 8, because after all it is a new century and technology rolls ever onward, and people, they do too, they adapt, they evolve, become something more, and that's all she's done, right, she hasn't lost anything, and just because-

Just because she looks at him, and she sees something more-

It doesn't make her evil.

It doesn't mean anything has changed, not where it counts, not underneath the new bones and the stronger skin and the oddly beating heart.

There's something else, she's _seen _it, in bits and flashes and pieces, maybe, but it is there, it's _there_, and maybe if someone had just reached out for it, maybe if someone had only been _paying attention_-

183 years later, he still hurts for his friend that he lost.

183 years later, his voice still thickens and his eyes still tighten and he has to work so _hard_ just to get the words out, to relive that moment in her stall when her eyes did not open and her head did not lift, when he called out and out and out and no one answered.

After a thousand years, she really expects to fix him, she sees in his eyes, but that's her whole _point _-a thousand _years _and he still feels alone- a thousand years and he can still be hurt, that he is alone, and you do not feel these things if you are _beyond_, ok, you do not softly smile and lean into a touch and let someone _in_, if there is no more man beneath the monster.

There's just so much _damage_. She has seen beyond the wreckage, peeked over the ruins and peered between the rubble, but ten centuries of terrible things- she can't just get _over _them, ok, she can't let go of Tyler and his mother and poor Aunt Jenna -what would that _make her_-

She lays across her bed with eyes open, fingers tapping.

She does not sleep.

She listens to the scratching of his brush, the scraping of his knife.

People- they drift so far way.

And sometimes you want so badly to tow them back, to keep them here, but your arm's not long enough, your voice not strong enough, they ignore your call, brush away your fingers, and sooner or later, you have to stop throwing out the lifeline.

You have to move on.

Let them thrash. They chose to drown, right, let them be, forget it, your help is not wanted, so turn _away_, walk beyond, lift a shoulder when they call out wait, changed my mind, I'm ready, _please_.

Keep going.

Do not let their eyes halt you or their pleas affect you.

She's _tired_, you know, so many good-byes, so many changes and let-downs and farewell forevers, and God how many times did she open herself up just to be cut down -why shouldn't she be scared- why isn't that _ok_-

Mom-

Mommy.

She's sorry.

How many times has she said this? How many things will she have to apologize for over the next century, two, three, and will you be watching them all- will you see and go, that's not my girl, not my Caroline, not the one I dressed in princess tiaras and ballerina tulle?

She shuts her eyes.

She keeps time with her fingers, down is the scratching of his brush, up is the scraping of his knife.

* * *

"I have an errand to run," he tells her. "I don't want to leave you here, but I think perhaps this time it might be more beneficial to your safety."

"Fine," she says.

Run, he tells her.

Do not fight, if Marcel's men show up looking for a quarrel.

Get away.

He will find her.

He will always find her.

"Fine," she says, and with head down he goes.

* * *

"Why would I help you?"

All around them flash the lights of the club, the painful white strobing of this ugly illumination which makes a chessboard of her face, here a shadow, there a sunbeam.

"And here I thought we were working together."

"We have a mutual interest," she replies coldly. "You said that yourself. That's all."

"Marcel's witch."

"I don't know anything about her, and I'm not helping you take her down. She's one of us."

"Well, the side she's chosen would seem to contradict that particular fancy, now wouldn't it?"

Sophie looks away.

He smiles. "I'm not asking you to particpate in the slaughter of one of your sisters. All I want is a bit of protection, for myself and Caroline. I imagine with the power of your little brood behind you you could whip up something satisfactory- some sort of ward or something, hmm?"

"No."

He smiles wider, leans in. "A vampire immune to witch magic- that would be quite the predicament, wouldn't it? Well, there's another brewing at the moment that you might want to turn your attention to." He tips himself back in his chair, puts his boots up on the table before him.

"Sweetheart?" he calls, and gestures with a flick of one finger.

From the corner behind Sophie's chair steps a girl.

"Do you remember what we talked about earlier?" he asks, lacing both hands behind his head.

"Yes. If she doesn't do what you say, I'm supposed to cut my throat."

"Fantastic, sweetheart- such a quick learner, this one." He flicks his eyes to Sophie's pale white face, her fingers curling with loud little pops around the edge of the table. "I've asked nicely, so let's try to keep this civil, shall we? There are more where she came from."

There is no satisfaction in the folding over, the knuckling under this time.

Sophie bows before him as she should, yes, roll over, minion, _worm_, but why can't he savor this; why does he see only her face, so disappointed in him, crushed beneath the weight of how much more she expected from him?

Why why why _why_- there have been too many questions since he met this girl, and he has no room for doubt, for second-guessing, he is the _hybrid_, love, the first, the best, his word is _God_, what he says goes, sweetheart, he will not be _questioned_-

But this hollow, inside his chest.

This pressure in his throat, this chafing of his eyes.

Humanity.

An enigma.

It is defined as such: the quality or condition of being human; human nature.

The quality of being human; kindness; benevolence.

And this is what she wants to see from him. _Benevolence_. Kindness, from a man such as him. Compassion, from a man who has been offered none, who has repaid the world for its indifference a thousand times, a million, and never will he be done repaying it, never will it be sufficient, never will he have _hurt _enough.

Sophie ducks away into a back room for privacy, and he gestures the girl forward.

Do you see, love, what he is; do you understand that he can never be what you want him to be, do you _understand _that he is too old, too broken, too _malevolent_-

He takes the girl's throat in hand and he holds her swaying in his grasp, clawing at his fingers, eyes leaking, lips pleading, and this is what he _is_, this is what he will always _be_, something to be abhorred and not absolved.

"Please," the girl whispers.

"_Please_," she begged him with shining eyes, shaking lips, and through his fingers he allowed Tyler Lockwood to slip, away into the night, beyond his reach, not once, not twice, but three times, sweetheart, for _her_, it has _always _been for _her_, for trying to see, for believing, for looking through the bricks he stacks high and the walls he builds up-

But why bother, love.

You have said it yourself.

People who do terrible things are just terrible people, and what would a girl like her want with a man like him.

Perhaps the boy he used to be, the child who helped sisters cross streams and brothers limp on bloodied feet from forest to village- perhaps she would have loved this boy, perhaps she would have married him happily and bore his children with a smile and lived out her one precious life with him by her side- perhaps she would have softened his father's blows with her poultices and her kisses, eased his lonely tears and his angry self-loathing.

Perhaps, Caroline.

Once upon a time, as the stories go.

He dimples the girl's pale, pale throat with his fingers, lifts her up before his hollow chest and his vacant eyes, the strobing of the lights painting her white, black, black, white.

"Please, don't," the girl whispers.

Mercy, she begs.

There is a part of him which is still human, she alleges.

She has seen it.

And so much has it intrigued her that she has tried to forget.

But there has been too much, hasn't there, he understands, and he digs his fingers in harder and he lifts the girl higher, and _please_, she sobs-

Let Tyler go.

_Show _her.

The lights flash, the music pulses.

Through the legs of his chair this pulsing spreads, crawls, up his spine, into his teeth, a lightning humming, a hot white sensation, a grating in the bones, a tingling in the fingers-

They stiffen, jerk, peel one by one away.

She steps out of his hand with a sob.

He sits alone in the corner, staring down at this unfamiliar hand with its marionette independence.

* * *

She wanders in his studio while he is gone.

She finds the sketchpad full of her face and the copy of Longfellow's _Evangeline _he keeps tucked behind his easel.

She grazes her fingers over his sketchings, his paintings, feeling them carefully, handling them gently.

Slowly she walks, cautiously she touches, getting to know this other side of him.

He has bookmarked _Les Miserables _in fifteen different sections; he has a first edition of Robert Browning's _Men and Women_, with a little sloppily inscribed note across the copyright page.

For my friend, it says.

Dear Klaus, he is called.

He keeps a notepad with little fragments of sentences here and there, snatches of poetry, carefully-copied quotes, Frost and Dickinson and Lord Byron and names she doesn't even recognize.

She walks in beauty, like the night.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.

Who knows what true loneliness is- not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or illusion.

A dozen pages, a hundred different ways of crying out.

She sits turning the pages of this notebook with her shaking hands, and it's like-

It is like seeing him leaning against that door frame all over again, feeling the coarse breaths of her death rattle, the wet bubbling in her throat, the flushed fever cheeks, the icy winter hands.

He thinks he keeps himself locked up so tightly, but the things his face tells her, when he thinks no one is paying attention.

His eyes give away, because he thinks no one bothers to look.

* * *

"I have something for you."

Ok, _look_, she tells him.

Your dreamy little drawings and your diamond necklaces are not working, she doesn't _want _them- she will not be _bribed_-

He hooks Sophie's talisman around her wrist.

"Don't take it off," he warns, and flashes from bedside to door frame.

"Wait," she calls.

Wait.

_Wait_, sweetheart, what a laugh -this is all he has _done_- for two _years _now he has lingered, hoping for a bloody bone tossed his way, a stray smile, a gentle look-

"I'm just- you can't keep doing these things. There is always another way."

Not for him, Caroline.

Not for a man who for a thousand years has turned to hatred, who has been given no other option.

Not for a man whose father tried to take his life and whose mother attempted to finish the job, whose siblings loathe and whose friends are non-existent.

"There _is_," she says to his back. "And I know you are capable of it. I know you are _better_-"

"I am not your little high school puppy," he hisses.

He cannot be reined in with a soft word and a softer touch- she knows he is _capable_, does she, that he is _better_- how, Caroline, _how_- what does she see that he does not; what could she have possibly stumbled upon that he for a thousand years has passed unknowingly by-

"I am not _asking _you to be. But you are so _hurt_. And you keep lashing out, and when has that _ever _worked- _you _are pushing away, Klaus. _You _are keeping everyone out. Ok, maybe you got dealt a crappy hand, I _get _it, but you have to _let go_. You have to be better than your dad. You have to understand that just because he didn't love you, it doesn't mean that you don't deserve it. But you have to be worthy of it. You have to try."

"I am a thousand years old, Caroline."

"And you are still human, somewhere underneath everything. I reached out. I am _trying_. Because you can tell yourself that what I said was all some sort of hallucination, that I was just saying what I needed to so you would save me, but I meant it. I meant every word."

He blinks, takes a halting breath, runs a hand down over his face. "I think you're setting yourself up for a bit of disappointment, sweetheart."

"No," she snaps. "You are going to try. And you are going to fail, over and over, but one day, you're going to take a step. And it's not going to be because I want you to. It's going to be you, just you, because you decided it was time, and you're going to take this step, and one day, you're going to take another."

"I don't take _orders_-" he snarls, whipping around, and she crosses the room in a blink to stand nose to nose to him with her pinched mouth and her bonfire eyes.

"You do this _every time_. You are so _freaking obsessed _with being the boss, with never being told what to do, with being in charge of _everything_ that you can't _listen_. You don't want to hear it, because you've already decided that you're too far gone, that you're evil, and I am so freaking _tired _of it-"

"_You _came to _me_," he roars. "You know who I am, Caroline- you know _what _I am. Perhaps you should have stayed at your little university, making friends instead of consorting with the enemy- I hear you're a bit short of those these days, hmm?"

"What is your _problem_- why do you always _do this_!" she screams. "You know what it is- you're afraid. You're afraid because I'm right, and you _know _it, and you can't take it. You're afraid, and you are alone, and it's freaking sad, is what it is-"

"I don't have to listen to this," he spits out. How _dare _she _pity _him -who does this little _infant _think she _is_- do not _look at him like that_- never _look at him like that_- he is not a man to be felt sorry for- he has within his hands the power to destroy an entire city, to raze whole countries, to crush to powder entire _civilizations_-

He is the _original hybrid_, Klaus, nightmare given flesh, bedtime shadow given form- _he _is what lurks within the closet and what crawls out from beneath the bed, the world trembles before him, the mighty throw themselves from throne to knees- _kings_, Caroline, _emperors_, he has felled them _all_-

"You are just a sad little man," she tells him.

He slams the door behind him so hard it cracks down the middle.

* * *

She finds him in his studio.

He paints with tense shoulders, knotted neck.

She stands with arms across her chest, watching his wrist flick up, down, back, across.

Red, black, blue, he liberally applies, his strokes hurried, his blending violent.

She has tried yelling at him. She has tried reasoning, reaching out. She has risen up against him and allied herself with him, and she's at the end of her rope here, ok, none of it has worked, and she wants to keep seeing, noticing, ferreting free, so you know _what_-

"I forgive you," she says, and he stops.

No one has ever done that before, have they- you did something shitty, let's move past it, let go, repair, build back up- no one has ever _said that_, have they?

She is saying it now.

She is moving past it.

Now _help _her.

Show her she has made the right choice.

_Try_, that's all she _asks_, not even for her, ok, but for _him_, for his own peace of mind, for his _family_, for everything he has wanted for a thousand years but insists on pushing away instead of pulling in tight.

"I don't condone what you have done. But I _forgive _it."

He turns with full eyes and clenched jaw.

Take down the wall.

One brick at a time, one layer after another.

That's all she asks.

* * *

**A/N: '****She walks in beauty, like the night' is the beginning quote of a poem by the same name by Lord Byron. 'One may have a blazing heart yadda yadda' is a quote made by Van Gogh, and 'who knows what true loneliness blah blah etc. etc.' is from Joseph Conrad.**

**Eventually, I do intend to bring in the rest of the family. I also want to incorporate flashbacks, which is going to take some research, so future one-shots will probably take longer to write.**

**And how is it that Klaus and Caroline are holed up in the same mansion, and this story has not a single drop of smut to be found? All in good time. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that.**

**Thank you so much for reading. As always, I hope this isn't complete crap, but who knows, because it's all unbetaed, every word of it. So with only my own (admittedly crappy) eyes I have looked it over and tried to find everything, but it's always hard to judge my own work, and so if you find this lacking, feel free to let me know.**

**Oh yeah, and the title is the name of a song by Edward Bradshaw, and is part of TVD's season four soundtrack.**


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